WASHINGTON, June 18 (Reuters) — U.S. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins announced plans on Wednesday to open a sterile fly dispersal facility in Hidalgo County, Texas, as part of the country's effort to fight the encroachment of New World screwworm.
The pest, a species of fly that has been eradicated in the U.S. for decades, has been moving northward in Mexico, leading the USDA to close the nation's southern border to cattle imports in May.
The Department of Agriculture is also planning to design a sterile fly production facility at Moore Air Base, co-located with the dispersal facility, but that is likely to take two to three years, Rollins said at a press conference at the air base.
Rollins also said the USDA is working with state animal health officials to create emergency plans and to stockpile therapeutics in the case of the screwworm crossing into the country.
Mexico has also taken efforts to limit the spread of the pest, which can infest livestock and kill within weeks.
Rollins said she and her team are working closely with the Mexican government and that USDA staff have been working in Mexico on a collaborative response.
One key tool to fighting screwworm is the release of sterile flies, which reduce the mating population of the wild flies.
Currently, the only sterile fly production facility in North America is in Panama. The Hidalgo County facility would receive fly larvae from that plant, and raise and disperse the flies by plane, Rollins said.
Eighty members of the U.S. Congress, led by Glenn 'GT' Thompson of Pennsylvania, chair of the House Agriculture Committee, sent a letter to Rollins on Tuesday encouraging the USDA to build a domestic sterile fly production plant.
Fighting screwworm in the U.S. would require 400-500 million flies per week, while the Panama plant can produce just 100 million per week, the letter said.
The USDA has also invested $21 million in updating a plant in Metapa, Mexico, to produce sterile flies.
(Reporting by Leah Douglas in Washington. Editing by Matthew Lewis and Aurora Ellis)